Transport practices are evolving and new services revolving around vehicle usage are being developed (e.g. ride hailing, car-sharing, carpooling). Frost & Sullivan estimates that worldwide car-sharing services attracted 36 million users in 2015(vs. 7 million in 2015). ABI Research has announced that 11 million shared and autonomous vehicles will be in operation by 2030. These services bear witness to an evolution in individual mobility towards shared mobility, increasing the number of passengers per vehicle for each trip. Because the borders between private and public transport are blurring, the car is becoming a space for socialization and interaction with the transport environment. This evolution in terms of usages is an opportunity to create new content for passengers.

New automotive technologies are making it possible to create increasingly interactive and immersive content. The connected vehicle is already providing opportunities to offer customers various services (e.g. infotainment, directions) and fun, geolocalized and personalized content. The autonomous vehicle will soon enable users to unlock new and exciting experiences in transport. The possibilities will indeed be endless for a driver freed from the need to do the driving. The vehicle will no longer be just a means of transport, but will also become a terminal, with its own content and operating system. According to AT Kearney, this evolution will create a €500 billion worldwide market by 2035, half of which will stem from services, media and entertainment.

As well as this, the advent of services such as AirBnB are proof of the growing interest of tourists for “experiencing” the cities they visit. This trend brings into question traditional modes of information (e.g. historical plaques, audio-guides) and requires the creation of more interactive and immersive content. In the same way, locals themselves are exhibiting a desire to become “tourists” in their own neighborhoods, re-exploring them and hearing what anecdotes they have to tell. A few examples of this include Detour, which offers tours off the beaten track, while Timescope offers travels through time itself, thanks to virtual reality glasses, and Chatty Maps gives an idea of the musical atmosphere in any given city.

Renault is thus developing new interactive and immersive content to offer to their customers. Their Silicon Valley team has chosen to consider the environment as a cardinal resource. The environment can thus either be considered a space for adventure, with which passengers might interact, or as pure scenery, into which passengers might escape. As far as Paris City Hall is concerned, it has a lot at stake in terms of the showcasing of its buildings, its history and it neighborhoods, with regards to both its tourists and its local citizens. It would be foolish of us to forget that France is the most visited country in the world, with more than 84.5 million international tourist arrivals in 2015 and approximately 83 million in 2016, not to mention that France is a short-listed candidate to host the 2024 Olympic Games.

With this in mind, Renault and Paris City Hall invite you to respond to the challenge outlined below.

With new automotive technologies comes an improved transport experience, offering passengers the chance to interact with their environment.How can we offer fun, interactive and immersive information for vehicle passengers?

Expected objectives for experimentation

DEFINITION OF INTERACTIVE AND IMMERSIVE CONTENT

Content might be consumed by travelling passengers (e.g. tourists, locals). This content should have the objective to showcase the city (its citizens, buildings, history, neighborhoods, anecdotes) and innovative discovery (“live and breathe the city”). As such, the scope is quite open (art and culture, sport, gastronomy).

FORMATS

The goal of this challenge is to rethink the transport experience as it stands today. In the short term, the content must be able to be consumed in today’s cars.

The experimentation might consist in the creation and broadcasting of content regarding information stemming from the vehicle itself: geolocalization, driver behavior, live video casts, environment etc. As tourist transport is multi-modal, the content created could be adapted to different types of transport (new transport services, walking, buses, bikes).

For example, we might imagine a portable content broadcasting solution which adapts to and uses the mode of transport selected by the user: available to smartphones in the case of a user on foot, available to a car’s GPS, etc…

Within the framework of the challenge, it will also be possible to rethink the transport experience in an autonomous vehicle. This approach is more exploratory as, in the long run, it will require the development of new projection devices.

Business Opportunities for Participating Stakeholders

Renault:

Creation of innovative new services;

Research and development on transport user experience.

City of Paris:

Propose new tourism services;

Strengthen Paris’ force of attraction;

Showcase the City’s willingness to innovate.

Resources

Access to a vehicle equipped with a system designed to capture its surroundings;